I keep trying to train myself to stop saying 'filmmaker' and start saying 'storyteller.' We're telling stories.

In film producing, there is an inherent tension between the director, the money and the producer, and that's what keeps it flowing and honest and accountable.

My first job, honestly, was as a proofreader. I say that a little disparagingly, but it actually was this sort of incredible thing, where I got this job proofreading for a cable television magazine.

When a crisis occurs, I feel that one of my greatest responsibilities is to set a tone of calm no matter what the problems. Sometimes I have to fake confidence a lot. I also have to fake calm.

The only way to sustain a career is to be as prolific as you can be, and open to opportunities.

It's humiliating to have to explain your value.

Ultimately when I throw myself behind a movie, I have to really believe in that directors vision.

I came to New York, and it was a really cool time. People like Jim Jarmusch and Spike Lee were making their first movies, and they were making movies that were personal narratives.

There were Hollywood movies and then there were those aggressively anti-narrative films that they showed at the Collective for Living Cinema.

I always say, what really makes a movie commercial is that it makes its money back.

I think that when you're doing an under-four-million-dollar movie, you just can't throw money at the problems.

Opportunity may only knock once, but temptation'll knock down the damn door and drag you out by the hair.

Clemency is also a revolutionary measure.

To think that all in me of which my father would have felt proper pride had I been a man, is deeply mortifying to him because I am a woman.

All I have is natural ability.

A really good detective never gets married.

I'm in a state of my life when the essential is very important to me. I don't like long songs with complicated arrangements and breaks anymore.

Though defensive violence will always be 'a sad necessity' in the eyes of men of principle, it would be still more unfortunate if wrongdoers should dominate just men.

Ah, how many luxuries has the good God prepared for his Jewish children.

He who has a why can deal with any what or how.

It can be tricky with branding these days, because everything is kind of branded.